If you couldn’t tell by my tweets, GDC gets a little crazy at times. Appointments change, people drop out, locations get mixed up. It happens often, but if you’re determined to meet with someone, you do, and that’s the case… Continue Reading →

If you couldn’t tell by my tweets, GDC gets a little crazy at times. Appointments change, people drop out, locations get mixed up. It happens often, but if you’re determined to meet with someone, you do, and that’s the case with Turtle Beach. I was intrigued by their latest device the PX5 Wireless Headset.

Michael Arzt, a Turtle Beach vice president, along with others showed off what the device can do and sent one home with me. Here’s the unboxing and some tidbits about the impressive headset.

Back of box

It features the important stuff like wireless Dolby 7.1 surround sound, dual Bluetooth support and a microphone. But what’s impressive is the software that directs the headset and tells it what to do. It’s ridiculously programmable with presets that boost the treble and bass along with sound mods that reduce the sound of gunfire and raises the loudness of footsteps. This could be a boon for FPS fans. Aside from being removable, the microphone also monitors your voice and lets you know if you’re yelling or speaking softly, so that you don’t annoy players you’re gaming with. On top of that, there’s even an option to disguise your voice.

On the practical end, the PX5 works with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. But the better feature is the dual Bluetooth technology lets you chat with your buddies in a match and listen to music or take calls from your smartphone. For example, you could be racing in Gran Turismo 5 listening to tunes from your iPhone and suddenly take a call from a friend. After your done with the conversation, you can resume listening to the iPhone music. Best of all, while you’re doing this interaction, you’ll be hearing the roar from the engine and whooshing of air.

I asked Arzt about the battery life on the PX5, and he said it lasts about 25 hours of normal use. But if you turn everything on, it drops it to about 20 hours. That’s not too bad considering that the system runs on two AA batteries.

Recently, Turtle Beach announced custom developer-made presets for the PX5. The first studio to jump aboard is Visceral Games which will offer a custom preset for Dead Space 2. To access it and others, you have to go to the Turtle Beach website and download software from the portal. After that, you have to plug in the headset to your PC via a USB cord (the PX5 comes with one). From there, players can mess with their own presets or download the developer-made ones. It’s another layer to a device that’s shaping up to be one of the most impressive on the market. I’ll have a review on it later this month.

What’s inside

A look behind

Opening the boxes within the box reveals cables, transmitter and the headset itself

Headset and transmitter together

Close up

Inside of the ear cups

The transmitter

The bottom of the earcups features Bluetooth controls on one side and volume controls on the other

I’m a little bleary-eyed after my first real day at GDC. Most of it was spent with Electronic Arts and their partners. The highlight of the night was this Battlefield 3 demo. Much has been made about the title ever… Continue Reading →

I’m a little bleary-eyed after my first real day at GDC. Most of it was spent with Electronic Arts and their partners. The highlight of the night was this Battlefield 3 demo. Much has been made about the title ever since it graced the cover of Game Informer. The pictures looked too good to be true. There were some instances I wondered whether I was looking at a video game or real life.

Whatever the case, I was impressed by what I saw of the game moving live tonight. Executive producer Patric Bach showed off what EA’s technology and the Frostbite Engine 2 could do. One of the interesting things is that the game uses the ANT animation sytem that’s also incorporated in FIFA Soccer. This makes movements more realistic. I saw soldiers sliding to a stop in the dirt. There are a few other scenes in the video above that shows players being tossed around like a rag doll by explosions and getting up as if they were pain and they had weight.

As for the lighting, it was gorgeous. The way it catches the dust makes the scenes on the Iran-Iraq border feel real. There’s so much that DICE captured in the details that it’s almost unbelievable. But the most impressive thing in the game is the next-level destructible environment. Battlefield 3 seems to emphasis urban warfare, and DICE up the ante allowing players to destroy whole buildings. There’s a scene that I saw where soldiers were pinned down by a sniper, and they had to go prone and crawl across the rooftop. Then your squadmates provided covering fire so that you could launch an RPG at the source. The explosive obliterated the side of the building. It even lit a few fires here and there.

When it comes to the mood, the tension and the danger reminded more of The Hurt Locker than anything else. I say this a lot, but there’s a grittiness to the game. Maybe that’s how EA plans to take away that shooter crown from Activision.

Anyway, I have no idea how this will run on a console. The game is reportedly coming out for Xbox 360 and PS3, but after watching the demo that ran off a gaming rig, I have my doubts. Maybe the PC is the only platform that can show off what Battlefield 3 can really do. And that makes some of the console-ish parts of the campaign look weird. To be more specific, there’s a quick time scene, where you’re in a fistfight after trying to defuse a bomb, and seeing mouse clicks instead of button presses threw me off a bit. But I figure that’s a minor quibble compared to the potential the game has to shock and awe the gamers at large.